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Stop The Traffik

REMEMBER THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE IN 1807- STOP THE TRAFFIC IN PEOPLE IN 2007!

STOP THE TRAFFIK

On Saturday 24th March this year, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York will be leading an event in London which is both a commemoration and a demonstration. Commemorating the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, and demonstrating against the trafficking in people that still goes on today. People from the churches in Staplehurst will be joining the march and rally on that day. So where did it all begin?

It was late November 1806 when the brig, the “Young Amelia”, slipped out of Liverpool and down the Mersey bound for West Africa. Captain Crow had made ready for sea with more than his usual haste and less than his customary thoroughness. For the unthinkable had happened. It was clear that Parliament was about to vote to abolish the Slave Trade, and this would be the last voyage that he would make as a slave ship's captain. Captain Crow was not a brutal or inhumane man; in fact he was noted for the good care he took of his human cargo so that they could be brought to market in prime condition. To him, slavery and the slave trade were part of the natural order of things that had existed for centuries. Europeans had not invented slavery, for it was older than the pyramids. So why was the slave trade now being abolished?

The answer was that a tireless campaign against the trade had been waged for more than thirty years by a group of Christians whose consciences had been roused by continuing accounts of the inhumanity and brutality that went with the trade as well as the conviction that it was morally wrong for one human being to own another. The Society of Friends, the Quakers, had been against slavery from the beginning. They rejected the argument that slavery was endorsed by scripture. Wealthy Quakers looked for alternatives to people in trade with Africa. They found it in cocoa. The Fry's, the Rowntree's and the Cadbury's all built up thriving businesses based on the plant. Their legacy today is that we have the highest per capita consumption of chocolate in the world!

Although slavery was millennia old, European involvement had changed its whole nature. For centuries North African raiders, the“Barbary Pirates”, had descended on coastal towns and villages indiscriminately in Spain, France, England and West Africa to snatch up those who they could catch and sell them into slavery around the Arab lands of the southern Mediterranean. Caravans had made their way from the Red Sea overland to the West African states to purchase slaves for domestic servitude in Arabia and beyond. Dhows had sailed down the East African coast to Zanzibar for the same reason. But Europeans wanted the slaves to work in sugar plantations in the West Indies, hard forced labour in conditions which European free labourers or convicts could not endure. The expanding sugar plantations needed slaves in unprecedented numbers. The African kings and chiefs who controlled access to the markets grew fabulously rich and organised raids further and further into the interior to meet the demand. The “triangular trade”, rum, guns and cloth from Britain to West Africa to trade for slaves to the West Indies, the “Middle Passage”, and the sugar, and sugar products, notably rum and molasses, home again made the merchants of cities like Bristol and Liverpool enormously wealthy.

William Wilberforce, MP for Hull, was the leader of a group of abolitionists known as the “Clapham Sect” who led the campaign. Legal victories had been won; a slave who set foot in Britain was at once a free man; the owners of the slave ship “Zong” whose captain had dumped his sick slaves overboard, and then tried to claim insurance were publicly execrated and their claim was rejected. Public opinion was gradually won round. And this when Britain was fighting a desperate war against terror- the “Terror” of the French Revolution. The years of campaigning and hard work paid off with a change of government. Charles James Fox, the liberal Prime Minister, declared that if the Bill to suppress the Slave Trade was his only achievement he would count his life well spent. In March 1807, the Bill became law. It was not just to be a paper measure, unlike some more recent laws outlawing centuries old traditions. The Royal Navy would maintain a squadron off the West African coast to enforce it for many years to come, especially after all other European nations agreed to adopt the ban at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

And what of the Slave Trade today?
  • 600,000-800,000 men, women and children trafficked across international borders each year. Approximately 80 per cent are women and girls. Up to 50% are minors. US Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2005

  • An estimated 1.2 million children trafficked each year. UNICEF UK Child Trafficking Information sheet, January 2003
These startling figures come from the organisation Stop the Traffik

  • Human trafficking is the third largest source of income for organised crime, exceeded only by arms and drugs trafficking. UN office on drugs and crime.

  • It is the fastest growing form of international crime, already generating 7 billion dollars per year in criminal proceeds. There are even reports that some trafficking groups are switching their cargo from drugs to human beings, in a search of high profits at lower risk. UN office on drugs and crime
These statistics show the scale of the problem; we could wait for another William Wilberforce to come along, or we could do something about it ourselves, such as supporting the Archbishops on the 24th March, and writing to our MP to see what pressure can be put on the government to be more active; it is estimated that there are up to five thousand teenaged girls in this country trafficked from Africa and Eastern Europe and forced into prostitution. What is happening about this evil trade? Demand the answers from those who ought to know- our government. As this article was being prepared for press, Tony Blair has announced that Britain will sign up to the European Convention on people trafficking after all- this is great news, but we need to make governments aware that signing a convention is only the first step.

“Churches Together” in Staplehurst plans to mark the commemoration of the abolition and to highlight the issue of people trafficking today at the Carnival in June.

Please give your support.

Kevin Fulcher.

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